


Jasper

by Kathar



Series: Chris [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Joining SHIELD, M/M, Racial Epithets, Therapy, Training, UST, and a SHIELD cast of many, guest appearance by Captain Ameribear, implied PTSD, once-and-future-slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-03-04
Packaged: 2018-01-14 03:10:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1250503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kathar/pseuds/Kathar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Miami in 2002, Chris, a kid with amazing aim and a fake name, and Phillip, a soldier home from the war, had a fling. It ended badly.</p><p>In 2005, probationary agent Clint Barton is desperate for a fresh start and Phil Coulson, Agent of SHIELD, wants to help while avoiding him at all costs. Agent Jasper Sitwell is stuck in the middle and just trying to do his job, goddamnit.</p><p>Tag info and trigger warnings in End Notes; complete as of 3/3/14.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story goes lightly over rough ground, but if you’re uncertain, go check the end notes for trigger warnings, please. Although the characters are dealing with some serious baggage, large sections of this story are meant to be… funny.
> 
> I’m not sure to whom I owe the most profound thanks for this: Beta J, who has been on this since the beginning and walked each step with me (including some very slippery ones); [Faeleverte](http://archiveofourown.org/users/faeleverte), who showed me what I’d been hiding from myself and has let me rant and kept me going and held my hand; or my husband, to whom I owe so much of this, from inspiration to music to jargon, to asking me if I was still afraid to go as far as I should. If any one of you hadn’t been along, I would never have finished this. You all went with me into uncertain territory and I cannot thank you enough.
> 
> On timeline and universe:  
> This is slightly AU from the MCU. Pre-SHIELD Phil and Nick are influenced by Battle Scars from the 616 verse. Clint and Phil have both been de-aged five to seven years compared to in-MCU indications of age. At the start of this, Clint is 23 and Phil is 34.

(SHIELD Headquarters, New York, late 2005)

“I’m not meeting with Vladimir, Coulson.”

“He’s been waiting a while, sir.” 

“It won’t hurt him to wait a while longer. What else have you got for me?” Nick Fury flicked one big hand out and waited until Phil Coulson put a file into it. He looked down, flipped it open to the neatly bullet-pointed summary page, and snorted. 

“Seriously? Phil, damnit, you’re shittin’ me here. This guy takes down two of our own, and you want to recruit him.” 

“In fairness, Director, he may have thought they were CIA.” 

“Hell, let’s pin a medal on him, then. All right, all right, I’m not going to bother with the file. I've seen it more than once. You tell me why you’ve got such a hard-on for this guy.” He rubbed his eyes-- eye-- absently and flung his boots up on his desk, sending a pen clattering to the floor. Phil knew him well enough to know that the effect created by the combination of his black-on-black outfit in the gloomy office was entirely intentional. The desk lamp itself had to have been tilted precisely so that his one eye would gleam out of his eight ball face when he sat-- lurked-- behind the desk. Fury’d always been one for the drama; he supposed the man had to get some amusement out of his life. 

Phil forced himself to breathe evenly and started, because he’d known Nick Fury since the near-invasion of Haiti, long before the Directorship of SHIELD was even a gleam in his good eye. Since before he’d had only one good eye, even. He’d long ago figured out how to recognize him in a persuadable mood, and boots on the desk spoiling his Cyclops-in-the-cave bit was a good sign.

“You’ve already seen the info on his skill set. Good hand to hand, proficient in pretty much any weapon anyone’s seen him with, but it’s his distance work that’s special. It isn’t exaggeration to say he never misses.”

“Didn’t miss our agents, I give you that.”

“Our agents should never have been near that site. If they had properly intercepted the transfer truck in the first place, instead of letting someone else get there first, we would not be here. Hell, if they’d had the sense to call the mission and ask for new instructions instead of going in under cover of darkness we still wouldn’t be here. Not their fault someone saw them being incompetent and assumed they must be either CIA or Archstone.” He winced as Director Fury spat automatically at the floor. (Not that he disagreed with the sentiment.) 

“Returning to the subject: he’s a good sharpshooter. Best marksman I’ve seen.”

“We have lots of good snipers, Coulson.”

“And most of them couldn’t come up with an original thought if they tried to pull it out of their ass with both hands. Whoever was in charge of recruiting the last few batches of agents” -- they both knew who, and he paused for Fury to issue his knee-jerk mumble of _cheap-ass motherfucker--_ “was not recruiting for brains in the sniper class. 

“Our guy? He goes in with a partner, they take out a bunch of guards, partner executes the prisoner he thought they were there to rescue, she abandons him in the middle of a pack of enraged hostiles, and what does he do? He apparently decides his original exit strategy is dead, swings himself into the ceiling, gives them a rooftop chase right out of a movie, and takes off in one of their jeeps while they’re still crawling around the eaves. And he's been dodging us for months. He can _think_ , Nick.” Fury waved this away, but Phil had caught his posture straightening earlier. 

“Where’d you get that intel on his partner?” Fury asked, confirming his interest. 

“Ever since we got the ID, I’ve had Sitwell on his tail and Woo pulling background. We’ve got some history to work with now. He was a contractor for Archstone a little under four years ago-- I think we can take the spit of disgust for read, please, sir?-- but not for very long. Moved onto MacKenzie’s at the first opportunity, which shows some sense. He was never in the sandbox; they sent him to Serbia and later bounced him around South America. He seems to have picked up some discipline or business sense or something with them, because he’s survived now for about two years solo, largely in the States. Nowhere near top of his class, but he’s taken care of himself. The relatively low payday reflects the fact that he tends to be picky about his jobs more than it does his skill level.

“Which brings us back to our agents, and the extraction they fucked up with such creativity. This is the first time our intel indicated he’s worked with a partner-- he’d have been on our radar a lot sooner otherwise. It’s also the first time he’s come across our radar taking out someone who isn’t a drug dealer, smuggler, arsonist, gang leader, or basically scum.”

“Are you referring to our two agents?” Fury broke in, “or the late Dr. Bugorski?” 

“Mostly the good doctor. Although it’s worth noting that both agents' wounds were clean and not life-threatening. And that Hawkeye--”

“Never misses. I got that.”

“From their descriptions, the partner was young, brunette, highly skilled, and, to quote Agent Ogilvy, ‘I’d hit that.’ Which Hawkeye pretty clearly was, they tell me. Ogilvy had eyes on her-- well, the eye that wasn’t swollen shut-- when they got to Dr. Bugorski. She’s the one who put a bullet in his forehead, and all sources pretty much agree Hawkeye didn’t take it well.”

“Your sniper thinking with the wrong organ that time, Phil?”

“I’m told it happens to the best of us. He’s been in the wind since then, but the CIA and Archstone are both on his tail, as are several elements from Russia. I think he’d be more than amenable to coming in, if approached with the proper incentives.”

“And you think we can work with him? Scratch that, you think this guy-- this kid-- who’s been bouncing between merc outfits and out on his own practically since his balls descended-- you think this guy can work with us? I will remind you that Shane from Mackenzie’s described him as, and I quote: ‘the most fucking arrogant cocksucker I ever had the pleasure to work with.’” Which was no part of the bullet points on Phil’s summary page (unless you counted “assertive personality” and “excellent self-promotion skills”). Hell, it wasn't anywhere in the briefing packet at all. Fury’d clearly been doing some extracurricular research of his own since the ID came back, even if he was pretending otherwise. Phil perked up a little. 

“Sounds like an endorsement to me, sir.”

“All right, all right.” Nick set his hand on his desk, then glared as it came up empty. “Pen, goddamnit.” Phil handed him one, and Nick set the file down and spread it open, then folded his hands and leaned across it at Phil. “When you pick him up, tell him it’s contingent on intel on his partner, since it seems to be her we really want.” 

“I... would prefer not to do that.” 

The Director’s eye widened at him. 

“Come again?” 

Phil sighed, and reminded himself that Fury hadn’t recruited him, hadn’t thrown the dice on a discharged and centerless soldier, because of his looks, charm, or cheery attitude. He was supposed to be blunt; it was in the job description.

“Sir, I’d like to actually recruit him, as you may have noticed. If we say ‘give up your partner and sign here,’ he’s in the wind. Period. Or he signs and whatever intel he gives us beyond ‘she’s brunette, good in bed, and apparently a sociopath’ is entirely made up.”

“What makes you think that?”

“It’s what I would do, sir.”

“Yeah, but you’re crazy like that. You’re telling me you think he’s got some kind of fucked up white knight syndrome?”

“A little. I’m not saying we don’t _ask_ him. I’m not saying we don’t press him very hard. I’m saying we don’t make it a condition of employment. Sir.” Fury looked at him for a long moment, then slowly picked up the pen.

“I’d tell you this one’s on your head, but you’ve already got half this year’s recruits on your head one way or another. And before you say it again, yes, this is what I hired you for. So, I’ll sign this-- on one condition.” Phil widened his eyes, because he’d sworn he saw a sudden shark smile there in the gloom. “The holiday party, Phil.”

“Sir. No. That’s not... no.”

“How badly do you want this, Agent Coulson?”

“... Fine.”

“Fine, then,” Fury said, and signed his name with a flourish. “You’re in charge of the potluck sign-up, and you can also bring those seven-layer bars of yours. And find a place for the after-party that has room enough for Cogswell to run amok if he drinks too much. Oh, and since that one’s safe for significant others, bring Tyler... Skylar... you know....”

“Jordan?” Phil asked, wincing. Drinks with the SHIELD senior directorate and spouses: best date ever. With any luck at all, the FBI wouldn’t be able to spare anyone over the holiday and he could give his lover’s regrets without a blush.

“Yeah, Jordan. Bring Jordan. You know where your man is now?” 

“Where? Down in Quantico doing training-- oh. You mean. Right.” Phil swallowed down the urge to say _he was never really my man_ in favor of professionalism, and answered the actual question with “Rotterdam.”

“For the love of God, why? Go and get him, Phil.” 

“Sir,” Phil paused, looked over the signed form, and set it carefully into his briefing folder, smoothing and straightening the edges. “Sitwell’s already on scene, it would be more efficient to have him make the contact.” Both of Fury’s eyebrows went up, taking his eyepatch with them just a bit.

“Come again?”

“Sitwell’s already there, and I have full confidence in his ability to--”

“Phil, you have been in my office three times now since the fuck-up, on my case about getting this guy. You just signed up to organize the office holiday potluck for him. This guy you’ve basically told me has major authority issues and I would just bet trust issues up the yin-yang, too. And you don’t want to handle it yourself? What did Sitwell ever do to you?”

“I have full confidence in Agent Sitwell, sir. More than that, I think he’s beginning to languish. He needs a challenge. In fact, I think we should consider him as supervising officer, too.”

“Phil, what the hell do you know about Clinton Francis Barton that you’re not telling me?” _Well, when you put it like that_ , Phil thought, _both too much and nothing at all_. Except that he was the last person on earth who should be stepping in and asking for the trust of Clint Barton when what little his file said about his past suggested he’d probably had about enough of sex and power games to last him a lifetime.

“Nothing sir, I just-- I just think it’s best to approach him equal to equal. Sitwell’s very good at that. I’ll be in his ear the whole time, of course.” 

“That and you hate Rotterdam.”

“Indeed I do.” Phil leaned back, and felt a relieved smile start to tug at the corners of his mouth.

“Oh, get out of here. I’m sure you’ve got work to do.”

“Thank you, Nick.”

Five days later, a SHIELD flight arrived from Amsterdam carrying Agent Jasper Sitwell, his new prescription for Prilosec, and an archer with a gunshot wound in the outer part of his thigh. The archer had a newly signed-contract with benefits and a written assurance that SHIELD medical would waive the pre-existing condition clause on the wound.  
___

Clint woke up-- again-- in SHIELD Medical. It had been only a week, and yet he’d already come both to hate the place and to be resigned to the fact that he was probably going to be spending large amounts of quality time in it in the future. He cracked his neck and eased himself upright where he’d slumped down against the flat pillows. The early morning light was smeared on the windows. How thoughtful that they’d given him an eastern room; all the better to never sleep well past sunrise. The bed creaked as he shifted, and he briefly wondered if this would be the day the whole thing collapsed in on him like some kind of venus flytrap. Wasn’t exactly the Mayo fucking Clinic.

There was one huge advantage over many of the previous medical facilities he’d enjoyed in his career as a mercenary, though: it existed at all. (Mackenzie’s facilities didn’t totally suck, they’d just docked his pay for any time he spent there. Otherwise, he figured his list of emergency rooms was extensive enough to be a good basis for a kind of mercenary Angie’s list, if only he’d had time to build and maintain a fucking website.) Also, he had a private room.

All right, so it was pretty reassuring, in a sterile, maddening, sort of way. So was the mass of paperwork that the balding guy in the wire-rim glasses who’d brought him in kept shoving in his hands. Clint had no clue what the fuck half of it was, but along with the disapproving attendants in their SHIELD-stamped scrubs and the SHIELD-stamped baggies of pain-killers and the lunch trays with the SHIELD logo on their scratched plastic covers, it meant that he’d stumbled into an organization that was prepared to spend its resources on him.

_First time in my life that’s happened, unless you count the fucking Lutheran Orphans' Home._

_Fuck no, let’s not count it._

There was a new notation on the whiteboard set up on the wall opposite his bed. It said “psych eval: 10:30 am Dr Barrie no meds.”

That explained why his leg hurt like a mother _fucker_ all of a sudden. 

Okay. Well. This was actual showtime, then. 

He’d endured session after session of questioning by a never-ending stream of nameless men and women in suits and ties or field suits (or, on one memorable occasion, an all-black leather coat), on the subject of _who was she, what can you tell us about her, did she ever say anything about her handlers, are you sure she was on her own, are you_ sure _you didn’t know she was going to kill Bugorski._ He’d endured it because wire-rims had told him, when he was bleeding out in an alley in _fucking Rotterdam for god’s sake_ , that he could tell them as much or as little as he wanted and it wouldn't make a difference. He wouldn’t get kicked out.

So yeah, whatever, he could do the interrogation thing-- did they honestly think he was that much of an amateur? Had no one looked closely at his fingernails, or were the scars that were still so noticeable to him finally invisible to others? They’d threatened his _hands_ in Bogota; SHIELD tossing him back out in the cold wasn’t gonna do shit.

And they could do whatever fucking tests they wanted on him-- they had a whole schedule lined up. Clint wasn’t dumb enough to think he was smart, but he managed to fake his way through tests well enough. Hell, even psych tests. 

Only.

_Only, if I was just gonna do that I could have stayed in fucking Rotterdam. Hell, I could have stayed in fucking Baton Rouge and hunkered down with the other suckers if that’s all I wanted._

There was a styrofoam cup with one of those bendy straws beside the bed, and Clint drained the last of the water from it quickly, ignoring how full his bladder already felt. He’d call for the nurse in a moment but for now, he needed to think. He had shit he needed to say to the psych. Lots of it. 

_If I can figure out how to get the first fucking word out, that is._

_Doc, I think there’s something wrong with my head._ No. _So, a couple months back I got into something a bit fucking hard to deal with._ No, they’d just ask about Her again, and ugh, he was so fucking done with that. _Hey, you been paying attention to the news lately?_

Closer? 

Fuck, it had to be easier to just deal with the fucking nightmares and the shakes and that bullshit, than risk this. Just ‘cause SHIELD wasn’t gonna kick him out for not talking shit about Her, didn’t mean they wouldn’t kick him out for being a headcase. 

_No, Wire-Rims said the psychs have that doctor-patient confidentiality thing, even here. As long as they don’t figure I’m gonna off myself or someone else, anyway._

They could kick him out for being a general sarcastic asshole, though. And lately he’d had exactly two modes: sarcastic asshole and silent asshole. (No, three-- there was also _insomniac asshole._ )

 _Hey, doc, what do you have to report if I tell it to you?_ Yeah, maybe? 

He went with that.

Dr. Barrie, who overflowed the tiny chair next to his bed in several directions, and who looked distinctly put-out to be there at all, opened with explaining to Clint just how lucky Clint was that he wasn’t being asked to come to Dr. Barrie’s office, and clearly the higher-ups wanted all of this expedited.

Then he leaned back, told Clint he was going to ask “the usual questions,” and waved off Clint’s own question with a “well, this is SHIELD, son, they get to know what they want to know.”

Clint gave “the usual questions” his usual answers-- the ones he’d had memorized since his days in the orphanage, when he’d quickly learned the answers that the docs wanted to hear, and the ones that would make them wince.

Then he tried again, with:

“So, this thing happened a little while ago, and I thought maybe I should talk about it?”

And Dr. Barrie leaned forward, crossed his hands on his knees, and said:

“You can tell me anything, you know. What happened?”

Clint gulped, screwed his eyes shut, and felt himself stepping off the edge in his mind. _Wile E. Coyote time, boy. One more fucking time._

“Katrina. Katrina happened,” he said.

“Ah,” Dr. Barrie leaned back, satisfaction oozing over his features. “That was her name, was it?”

Jesus fuck, it hurt when you hit the ground that hard from that high. Clint felt like he was staring up at the top of the cliff and watching Dr. Barrie grin over the edge at him. 

He waved the white flag.

“You know what, never mind. Just, never mind.”

He’d just have to figure it out on his own. Keep his head down low, keep his fucking mouth _shut_ , and hope that eventually things started to even out.

Hell, one good thing, though: at least lunch was sometime soon and he could have his drugs back.

Bless SHIELD fuckin’ medical, anyway. 

___

If nothing else, he was getting a master class in handling red tape, and learning far more than he wanted about the vagaries of their human resources division. That wasn’t quite what Jasper Sitwell had expected when Coulson had come into his office two months ago and said: 

“How did you enjoy Rotterdam, Agent?”

“It must be nice, being Fury’s right-hand man, sending other people to that shit-hole instead of having to go yourself. Sir.” Coulson smiled his tiny little smug smile, and sat down across the desk from Jasper. He’d smoothed his tie as he settled himself in, and Jasper found himself wondering what kind of statement navy silk with diagonal moss stripes was making. If it had been the maroon with black flecks, he’d have been under the desk with his hands over the back of his neck.

“That was a good job, recruiting Barton. Except for the leg, really.” 

“The leg was an accident, sir; he got caught in the cross-fire.” He’d _created_ the cross-fire in the first place, since as it turned out Archstone was only half a step behind SHIELD. Clint Barton had also grumbled the whole way back that if people would just stop _getting in his way_ , he’d have been gone before he could have been shot. Archstone had a sniper with mediocre aim and three ultimate fighting drop-outs surrounding him, so Jasper figured Barton might even have been right-- in the short run. But he’d made some powerful enemies, for a sarcastic, underfed, too talented for his own good white kid (Jasper was still of an age where anyone more than five years younger automatically became a “kid”). It was only a matter of time before he ran out of time, luck, and alley. He’d known it, too.

“Well, legs heal. As I said, it was a good job. And as your reward--”

“Oh God, sir, what now?” he had groaned, because he knew perfectly well what the reward for a job well done was. 

“How’d you like to be his Supervising Officer?” Another job. Right. He’d have to remember that navy with moss stripes was Coulson’s _upend Jasper’s life_ tie, for the future.

“How much choice do I have in the matter?” 

Coulson shrugged. 

“Agent Hand requested you on an ongoing operation in Nuevo Laredo to liase with CISEN. Either way, it's a security level bump; congratulations. Pick one,” he said.

So: very little choice, as it turned out. 

Now he started down at Barton’s file and turned up the volume of the music coming from his computer speakers, in order to hide his own cursing. Jasper processed better under stress when he was busily unleashing a stream of profanity; for the same reason both the pounding of a bass line and the thump of heavy artillery seemed to speed up his reaction time. They all of them drew off just enough of his attention that the rest of his brain could focus, and he needed a hell of a lot of focusing to deal with the mess that was Clint Barton.

 _But I gots 50 things to say in a cheeky kinda way_ the music snarled, and Jasper scrambled to plug in his earbuds, glancing up reflexively to make sure no one had been passing by. _Chi ching, it's Ms.Sovereign,_ the beat pulsed straight into his eardrums, and he relaxed a little, reputation intact.

What he couldn’t figure was why no one else saw Barton as a mess. All the tests and reports in the file-- with the exception of interpersonal skills-- said “good” or “promising.” Or “quiet.” Lots of quiets on there (interpersonal skills had mixed it up with a "taciturn"). 

But the scruffy, exhausted whipcord-and-sass guy he’d encountered in that back alley, he’d been anything but quiet. It shouldn’t have bothered him as much as it did, but Jasper couldn’t help watching, and what he saw reminded him of a guy he’d been in the sandbox with. Started out sassy, always pushing, always ready to go. He’d gradually-- for no reason at all, really-- started to shut down. The pranks had been the first to go, so everyone had been relieved. The insults the next, then the chatting at the PX. 

By the time they’d found him behind his tent, brains splattered all over the sand, he’d gone days without talking to anyone.

So far, Jasper didn’t think he was seeing that in Clint Barton, but he also knew that SHIELD wasn’t seeing the whole man. SHIELD liked what it was getting in him, and wasn’t looking further. That’d have been fine if this silence was sustainable, and if Barton was going to be just a sniper specialist. He could go on for years that way, just scraping by at SHIELD, hanging on by what SHIELD hadn’t fully realized yet was an out-of-this-world set of skills. 

But Jasper had seen Barton’s file, and he’d seen the effort Coulson had put into the research for it, and he’d sat there and stared at Coulson’s tie in mute despair as the man had handed Barton’s life over to him. He’d had Barton sass him in a back alley as he bled out, he’d had Barton sass him in a hospital bed in Rotterdam and one at SHIELD, he’d even had Barton sass him in his own office when he was tired and wrung out after a long day of polite interrogations regarding his former partner the brunette assassin-- Jasper was apparently the only person Barton felt he _could_ sass. So Jasper knew it was still possible; the potential hadn’t been lost. 

Agent Coulson had taken Jasper’s own life in his hands in the not-too-distant past. He’d extracted Jasper very neatly from the pleasant bland little future he’d imagined for his post-Army career in the Diplomatic corps, where it wouldn’t matter if he was a hothouse plant in the middle of native shrubs because that was the goddamn _point._ It helped to be a little… eccentric, if not downright _exotic_ , to use a phrase Jasper hoped he’d never have to hear again in relation to himself. Jasper’d imagined years of transplants every few years into hopefully increasingly-larger and more-important consular pots, and if it wasn’t a thrilling idea-- and it profoundly was _not_ \--it was something he was used to. 

Then Coulson had uprooted his tender shoot of a career and planted it here in SHIELD, where it paradoxically thrived on a steady diet of dark, damp, heady bullshit punctuated by explosions and general mess. The diplomatic corps was as far in his past as his unfortunate grunge phase by now. Coulson clearly thought Barton had similar promise, and Jasper would be burned in whatever Hell might actually exist out there-- Tampa, possibly-- before he’d disappoint the man and let Barton slowly drown in a sea of mediocrity, when he was well within sight of shore.

So it was probably time to call Coulson in. 

____  
He might have known him again, or he might not, if he'd come upon him unawares.

It wasn't much worth thinking about. Phil hadn't happened on the man he now knew was named Clint Barton, he'd very deliberately positioned himself in the upper level overlooking the range, where Barton was standing within one of the lanes, turning a pair of earmuffs over and over in his hands, and staring at the target in the distance. 

He was both smaller and larger than he’d been; his shoulders and arms were now those of a fully-grown man, and one who depended on their strength to stay alive. The rest of him was leaner, not quite to the starvation point but thinner than that face, still improbably young but now also stretched tight around what turned out to be a rather gnomish nose, should ever be. There were far more scars, or so the notes from his physical told him. 

Phil had been thinking he’d know Clint Barton when he saw him, but somehow the reality of the man was proving that he’d only ever known a kid named Chris. And Chris, with the easy smile that he tried to bury under heavy-lidded gazes, Chris with the body that twisted as easily falling through the thin evening air as it had underneath Phil on an anonymous mattress, Chris who fought like a terrier with both fists and words, Chris wasn’t here.

The man who stood below him, his evaluations and results printed neatly onto a sheaf of paper in an open manila file in front of Phil, was ages and worlds removed from Miami and from a restless first sergeant in the Rangers. Phil had gone looking for Chris, and he’d brought home a stranger.

Or more properly, the man standing next to him and glaring down at Barton through his glasses, had brought him home.

“What has you worried, Agent? From the results, it looks like Barton is settling in well, if a little reserved.” Phil asked, and watched Jasper Sitwell collapse a little, rubbing one hand against the stubble of his recently-shaved head as he gestured with the other.

“A ‘little reserved’ is a fucking understatement, sir,” Sitwell said. “HR says its too early to worry and he’s performing at expectation, but I’m the one who did the research, and something’s wrong here. Look at him, that’s the most animated I’ve seen the guy get, and I don’t get it. Mackenzie’s said he was a smartass, Archstone said he was a smartass, _everyone_ said he was a smartass, hell I’ve seen him be a smartass, but no-one else at SHIELD’s gotten a goddamn word out of him. At first I put it down to the stress of having been chased through half of Europe like a, well, like a fucking dog. But _look_ at him.”

Phil was looking, yes. 

“His test scores are coming back fine, his intake evaluations don’t suggest anything we didn’t already know-- undereducated but highly intelligent, flexible, varied background, had a rough time of it lately. Psych signed off on him, said they saw no immediate concerns. Maybe he’s still just recovering. Medical’s only just let him on the range; that might settle him.” Sitwell shifted next to him, and Phil bit back a sigh.

“Maybe,” Sitwell said. Phil waited for him to continue, since that was clearly not an agreement. Beneath them, on the range, Barton looked over his shoulder as he got an order from the instructor hidden underneath the overhang. A ghost of a smile flitted across his face, and he fitted the muffs on his head, his too-big hands covering them entirely as he did. 

Before Phil and Sitwell had quite finished resettling themselves, Barton had picked up the pistol one-handed and emptied the clip dead-center into the target. He was still looking backwards at the instructor, and the smile had been joined by a slightly raised eyebrow.

There was dead silence on the range for a long moment, and Phil realized he’d forgotten to breathe, forgotten the paperwork clutched in his hands as he leaned over the rail watching Chris blossom to life within the shell of Probationary Agent Clint Barton.

“Well, shit,” Sitwell dropped the words into the silence like little stones sinking to the bottom of a pond.

Barton looked up at them for a moment and gave his SO a lazy, two-fingered salute. Phil looked back down at the file until he felt those eyes leave him. He turned his gaze back to the range when Barton started shooting again, doing something complicated to the target.

“Good to know the smartass is under there,” he said, frowning and flipping back through papers.

“He knows what we want him for. Maybe,” Sitwell said, “he’s just trying to be on his best behavior, sir?” Phil looked up at him, and Sitwell waved his hands around a bit, “I mean, he knows he’s on probation and needs to ingratiate himself. Maybe this is _it_? Skulking around like a… a sullen teenager who knows he doesn’t have company manners?”

“I’m not sure what you needed me here for, Agent,” Phil said, and he meant it. “That sounds about right. Hrmph.” He’d found what had bothered him in Barton’s file, and tapped it. “Who the hell assigned him Barrie for his psych eval?”

Sitwell looked down at the name on the psych report, then back up at Phil. Barrie was old guard, less than two years from retirement, and Phil had been told he had to work around the man for the time being. Since Barrie had been two years from retirement for at least six years, since before Phil had even been at SHIELD, his patience had been wearing thin. Phil felt it snap in two as Sitwell cursed softly.

“That’s who was assigned by intake. If Barton was hiding something, he’d never have noticed, would he? If I ask to have him re-evaluated, will you sign off, sir?” he asked. Phil was making a notation to that effect on the paperwork even as Sitwell spoke.


	2. Chapter 2

Clint flexed his fingers slowly, trying to work the stiffness caused by hours of bubble-scribbling out of them, as he meandered slowly down the hallway. So far, life in a quasi-governmental semi-secret global security organization had entailed a lot more paperwork than expected. Also more assessment and aptitude tests. And training modules for everything from helicarrier emergency evacuation procedures to purchasing card protocol. Which was hilarious, since who was going to let him out on the town with a company card? 

There were two bright points in all the paper: SHIELD evidently had decided he didn't need a full training regimen, so he wasn't being exiled somewhere with a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears kids. (Who were probably mostly his age, but whatever.) Also, there were the practical skills assessments. The firearms instructor had thrown up his hands extremely early on in the ranged weapons assessment after Clint had signed his initials on the target in bullet holes, and said “sure, what the fuck, show me what you can do with a goddamn bow.” After seeing what Probationary Agent Barton could do with a goddamn bow, he’d gone very, very silent. Then he’d blinked, checked off a couple of boxes on a form, and waved him off.

Now, Clint found Sitwell grinning as he came into the agent’s office. Sitwell returned his greeting and, still chuckling, handed him an email he’d printed, from the firearms instructor to himself. 

“Sir?” Clint said, staring at it after reading it twice, “It’s not that I don’t appreciate having my finer qualities appreciated, but I’m not sure that being a probie and holding a ‘master class’ is going to make me popular around here.”

“First time I heard you wanted to be popular, Agent Barton,” Sitwell said, trying to re-arrange himself into some semblance of calm. “You seem more intent on avoiding everyone.”

“I don’t avoid you, sir.”

“True. You bring me fresh presents of half-dead paperwork every day, and I’m extremely grateful. I’ll say no, if you want. But if it makes you feel any better, this isn’t likely to earn you a wedgie in the showers after gym.”

“Well, now I’m disappointed.” Clint said, dropping himself into the other chair in the room. 

“Might counterbalance some of the impression you created, mouthing off in Agent Goddell’s orbital assets overview.”

Clint had slipped that time, he knew he had. It was so fucking hard to keep his mouth _shut_ , but when he opened it, the kind of shit that came out was not going to do him any favors in a tight-assed place like SHIELD. His time with Archstone had made that clear, and his time with Mackenzie’s hadn’t done much to contradict it. They’d both, in their own ways, made it clear how little snark was appreciated. He hid a wince now, but his brain was ahead of him again, and he cursed it as he felt the words leave his mouth:

“Definitely not doing it, then. I’ve worked very hard to create this aura of snark and surliness.”

Sitwell glared at him then handed him a second sheet of paper, looking slightly apologetic, and Clint realized the email had just been to soften him up for whatever this was gonna be, as if the one could take the edge off the other or some bullshit like that.

Clint stared down at the paper and tried to calm his breathing, hide the way tension suddenly twisted in his shoulders. 

“Sir?” he asked. “I thought Dr. Barrie cleared me?”

“He did,” Sitwell said, looking down at his paperwork.

“Then… what?” He’d been so fucking careful. He hadn’t said a fucking _word_ wrong. Unless you counted the Goddell thing, yeah. Problem had been that, unlike a lot of the other retired agents SHIELD brought in to do continuing education, Agent Goddell actually paid attention. He encouraged people to ask questions, went off on tangents about sports cars and the Napoleonic wars and his wife, and just generally got in under Clint’s skin in a not-exactly-unpleasant way.

Which was why, when some asshole in the back--and god Clint hadn’t even gotten the fucker’s name--had started spouting off about global surveillance replacing old-fashioned whatever the fuck it was all shit he didn’t, clearly, know shit about, Clint had slapped him down without thinking about it.

“Tell you what, you take your fancy GPS tracking devices and stick your ass out in the middle of the Gobi, or upriver in the middle of Brazil, and tell me how you like it then. Hell, I remember trading my satellite phone to some little guy with a sweet palmwood longbow. He’s the one who got me out when my job went to shit.”

Doesn’t-know-shit guy had then suggested Clint was lying, and Clint had suggested that doesn’t-know-shit guy hadn’t known shit. 

So, he’d _tried_ to be careful. That was the first time in a while he hadn’t been able to get out of a room before the words had bubbled up past his lips. 

Clearly he hadn’t been careful enough.

The paper crumpled in his hands, and he was out of Sitwell’s office before he knew he’d left it.

 _It’s not working._ You knew it couldn’t work, Clint you fucking dummy. How long can you go with nightmares every night and random fucking spurts of rage before you wash out?

A perfect aim does not solve all life’s problems, and it was not-- he’d been told over and over again-- worth keeping its owner around if he was a fucking asshole in everything else. 

Archstone had very nearly deserved him at his worst-- he thought about them from time to time, usually in a _thank fuck we split early_ kind of way. Phillip-- his mind shied away again from the memory of Miami, of strong shoulders and a sad smile that melted his knees (and other parts)-- had not been wrong, not about Archstone, not about MacKenzie’s. But neither had Clint; he wasn’t ready to be part of any organization that would have him. Archstone’s long-spoon grip had been all the more control he could take, and that not for long. He was amazed they hadn’t shot him in MacKenzie’s, in one of his bad moods. And he’d been _trying_ to get along by then. He’d gone back to his original plan and gone solo largely because he couldn’t handle anyone else for long periods of time, and they couldn’t handle him. Even this last year-- running straight from yet another betrayal into the middle of an actual disaster in the making-- had at least seen him free and making his own choices. That was the choice he'd made, in Miami.

Imperfect as it was, Miami and all that followed it had represented a step forward. He tried not think about _before Miami_ ; there was a clean split in his mind between that and Barney and Trickshot and Duquesne and everything that came with the memory of them. Rough as the years since had been, they were still miles better than all of that mess of ego and naivete and betrayal. They were divorced from the present neatly by the memory of searing hands, arrows flying, and a leap off a horrible pink building into the sunset. 

Still, every fresh start he’d made had inevitably circled back to him leaving, or being left, alone.

He’d hoped SHIELD would be different; he’d been an idiot.

SHIELD was going to go the same way.

_Oh, god, breathe. BREATHE. Who’s coming? HIDE!_

Except there was no place _to_ hide in this fucking place, all clear glass and random columns and open spaces and long corridors and-- was that vent loose?

Clint went up. 

There wasn’t a hell of a lot of room to move; it definitely wasn’t someplace he was going to be staying long. But it allowed him the space to crumple and sob silently for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” he mouthed, and he wasn’t sure who to. “I’m fucking sorry.”

He made it back to his quarters long after curfew, let himself in silently and flung himself down on the bed. 

There’d been a fresh start in there somewhere, he remembered as he stuffed his headphones into his ears to cancel out the noise from Jackson next door, turning his tunes up to eleven _again_. ( _Whatcha gonna do, slam doors, break a glass_ the voice from his headphones rapped sharply into his brain.) The hurricane had at least brought him that.

 _Gonna start over, I think_ , he remembered saying to the old man when he got out of the pick-up truck at last. The old man’s hound had whined at him from the back of the open cab, and they’d both looked back. The truck still smelled of algae and rot and fishheads, and the man smelled of decay, just like Clint did. It had been the longest two weeks of Clint’s life, and that was _really_ saying something. They looked at each other for a moment, then the man nodded at him.

_Best idea I’ve heard in weeks. Thank you for everything you did._

Clint had shrugged, looking down.

_They all died anyway._

_But not alone. And not all of them._

Clint curled up into his hands on the itchy blanket, tearing his earphones out at _say hey there, we don’t play fair, you can’t stay here, hope you take care._

“God, I’m sorry, man. I started again, just turns out I suck at keeping going.”

More paperwork crumpled under his stomach as he rolled over.

___

The pile of personnel files Phil’d brought in for signature had already been dealt with and were listing on the credenza next to the Director’s door, waiting to be taken away. The regional briefings had been handled, assigned, and shipped off. Two separate ops commanders had come and gone after explaining inconsistencies in their reports, the quartermaster had sweated through the weekly briefing, and Fury had handed the last pile of folders off to Phil, who’d dumped them on the chair next to him, when the shoe dropped.

“So, Denton Barrie handed in his resignation today,” Fury said nonchalantly, while pulling out a bottle of bourbon from his desk drawer. Phil tracked the bottle and sighed, then brought two tumblers over from the credenza, where they sat by a carafe of water. He settled himself into the chair more comfortably while Fury put his feet up on the desk-- the eternal despair of his executive assistant-- and glowered at Phil over the rim of his glass. “He said something about being hounded and second-guessed at every turn?”

“What possible reason could there be to second-guess him, sir?” Phil said, enunciating each word carefully.

“Could be because he’s a pompous asshole.”

Phil acknowledged this with a shrug and nod.

“Thought you’d decided to just live with Barrie.” Fury frowned into his drink. “What happened?”

“Things change,” Phil said carefully. “It had been brought to my attention that even with his limited rota he might be missing… very material concerns. And causing passive, if not active, harm to agents.”

“This is Barton again, isn’t it?” 

“Again?” The bourbon covered any hitch in his voice, Phil hoped, and raised an eyebrow back at the Director. Yes, of course it was Barton-- the man seemed to be living in the back of his head lately, all curled up and lost. It still hurt him that he hadn’t seen what Sitwell had seen, even though god knew it shouldn’t have; it wasn’t like he was Barton’s S.O. It wasn’t like he was ever even in the same _room_ with Barton, if it could be helped. Although the world hadn’t ended, the few times it had happened. Nor had Barton turned pale and swooned away, nor punched him, or even-- or even _noticed_ him particularly.

Given that Phil had worked very hard to be unobtrusive around Barton, his success shouldn’t have come with such a tinge of disappointment. It would have been nice to know how the man thought of him-- if he thought of him.

Of course he didn’t think of him.

Why would he? For Chris-- never Barton, not in memory-- Phil had been at best a supporting character in Miami, nothing more than a pleasant sex haze, followed by some stupid failed white knight moves. For Phil, Miami had been the last good time, Before. Chris’s body and accuracy and ferocity had been the last sweet memories he’d carried back into the combat zone, and even they’d been tainted by what had followed. If he had to go back, stand in that alley again as the setting sun blinded them all, the only thing he’d have done differently was to spit on Chris’s targets after they were down.

Hindsight. The only benefit Phil could find to it was that it meant he was still _here_ to have it. 

“Phil,” Fury sighed, and put his boots down so he could lean on the desk. “There’s a fine line between removing assholes and micromanaging personnel affairs. You got rid of Barrie, so fine. I don’t see what’s so off in this guy’s file, though. You do?”

“Agent Sitwell does,” Phil said, dragging his mind back to the present. He was starting to get an idea where this was going, and the last thing he really needed was for Fury to come back around to his new theory about What Phil Needed, “and I trust Agent Sitwell. He’s got promise.”

“God help him,” Fury snorted quietly, but he removed his elbows from the desk and Phil breathed again. “I’m glad to see you’re starting to delegate properly, at least where one agent is concerned. Fine, fine. Barrie was nearly the last on your list, wasn’t he? Between you and Hill, you’ve pretty much cleaned out the dead wood. I’d tell you good work, but I wouldn’t want it to go to your head, Cheese.”

Aw, crap, here it came.

“Thank you, Director,” Phil said, and sat up straight. “Do you need me for anything? I should get these files to--”

“How’d Jordan take it?” Fury asked, and Phil slumped back into his chair. Ah, yes, the traditional post-breakup check-in. A sense of vague resentment rapidly gave way to exhaustion. It wasn’t like he hadn’t done anything to warrant it. At least this one was an easy one to answer.

“Just. Fine. Sir. We’d been spending so little time together anyway, once the Boston transfer went through. I think it was a relief. And I’m just fine, too. Nick? Can we not--”

“Oh no, no, no,” Nick Fury, who Phil knew far too damn well by this point to be at all comforted by the levity in his tone, waved absently. “I’m not really worried about that.” Which was nice for a change, but meant something worse was coming. “You’ve got more time on your hands now, though.”

“I… do.”

“Hmmph. And your list is almost gone.”

“It… is.”

Phil could _feel_ the ax about to fall. He had to think of something-- anything-- to turn the Director off the path as quickly as possible.

“Although, I’d like to re-evaluate most of the psych staff now, we can’t be too careful--”

“Goddamnit, Coulson! No. If you’ve got enough time on your hands to micromanage all that, and all _this_ ,” Fury indicated the files at Phil’s feet and on the credenza with a wide sweep of his hand, “you’ve got too damn much time on your hands. You’ve done everything I’ve asked you to and more, are you seriously going to tell me you don’t trust your hand-picked personnel? No? Then I have some other projects for you. You’re gonna love ‘em.” He shuffled into a pile on his desk and eventually pulled a few files out. 

Phil received them on his lap as Fury tossed them, and stared down at them in dismay.

“Take a look at those, Phil, and pick a few S.O.s you want to work with. I’ve always got ops that need an unusual approach, and you’re the man to run them. Unless you have any lingering personnel concerns?”

Besides the ever-problematic Agent Clint Barton and his incredible aim and whatever the hell was going on in that quicksilver brain that Phil could not afford to give too much time to? Unfortunately not.

“Fine,” he sighed. 

“Oh, good god, Phil, don’t look like I just killed your puppy instead of getting you back into the field.” 

He looked up at that.

“I thought you just wanted me to be operational commander--?”

“I do, because I know there’s no way you’re gonna stay back here for all of ‘em, Phil. Think of it as getting back on the horse the easy way. You’re my custodian, Phil, you clean up all my messes. I got plenty of ‘em out in the field, and I want my best man there, or at least coordinating. Don’t kid yourself, this is what I’ve been working you back to. All right?”

No, really not all right-- for any number of cogent reasons that Phil absolutely could not articulate when faced with that direct stare.

“Fuck.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”  
____

 

He went to psych that first week and said exactly nothing. The lady-- whose name he hadn’t even bothered to memorize-- had merely shrugged and told Clint to come back next week. And the week after, because he clearly was going to need it. He’d been so surprised she hadn’t just recommended he be cut loose that he’d stood in the doorway gaping at her until she’d waved him impatiently away.

Unfortunately, if psych wasn’t gonna cut him loose today, Clint could be wandering around for days-- weeks-- waiting for the ax to fall. Waiting for them to finish whatever kind of paperwork SHIELD did to slap an official bureaucratic label on _dumping you out on your ass._ It’d honestly be easier just to go before they made him.

Just walk out the door.

_Grab the bow on the way out. Still got a living to make._

Clint felt his stomach twist on him as the implications of that came roaring back. It had been so nice, for once in his life, not having to hoard cash, food, ID, in little forgotten lockers and PO boxes all over the country (though he still had them). Not to have to find a new place to sleep with each new contract-- or god, each new night, sometimes. That endless round of strange motels, flophouses, back rooms, or the back of his car. Such a little time to have gotten so soft.

What would he even do? Grab the cash under his mattress, yeah, and some powerbars or shit from the caf-- getting out of SHIELD itself was easy. His closest cache and vehicle were all the way in Jersey, but Clint supposed he could get the train. That was easy enough. So, train, Yardley, grab the Honda, drop by the post office and empty out the PO then… what? 

Was Archstone still watching for his name out on the grapevine? Would SHIELD be? 

If he couldn’t do his goddamn _job_ without someone trying to take him out, what did that leave? Private security? He didn’t know if his IDs would hold up to a background check, so that meant bouncer at a club or… someone who had a reason not to perform background checks.

Because yes, trying to be the bodyguard to whatever local mobster needed one was gonna end _so_ fucking well for him. 

_You ran away from that life once, you really wanna go back? You fallen that far already?_

Phillip’s face, twisted in concern, floated in his memory for a moment, blurred by the passage of time but still like a fist to the stomach. Clint shook his head violently to clear it.

Hell, he hadn’t even been kicked out on his ass yet, but already he was assuming he was gonna end up on the wrong end of a pissed-off mobster. _That is an impressively messed-up brain you got there, Barton. Sure you don’t need a shrink?_

_Why the fuck do you think I’m here, me?_

Yeah, convenient that. Even more convenient, he’d just been given exactly what he’d originally come here for-- a second chance to get help. So maybe SHIELD _was_ just gathering evidence before dropping him on his ass. If he could just get better _before_ they did…. Oh, god, that would mean weekly psych appointments. If anyone noticed that he was screwed. He didn’t need to try and deal with a SHIELD rep as “that crazy guy.” Sitwell likely wasn’t gonna say shit, because it’d reflect badly on him. But it was gonna stick out like a sore thumb.

 _So, quit now_ , Clint told himself. _Maybe Archstone’s stopped looking. Maybe SHIELD won’t care._ Except, even that-- being on his own with no-one on his tail-- didn’t sound promising anymore. Back to fast food and fake names and emergency rooms? He _liked_ SHIELD medical. They had good drugs and they’d found problems he’d been living with for years. He’d thought before about wandering in there during off-times, just to see if they’d take a look at his teeth. 

That’d look fucking funny on his file.

That’d… _now there’s a fucking idea. Where do you hide a doctor’s appointment?_

Clint flung himself off the bed, and onto his laptop, and started looking up those benefits Sitwell had said he had.

He stuffed the earphones back into his ears when the thumping from Jackson’s room became too much to bear, just in time for the Chemical Brothers to drown out any other thumping on the planet. ( _The world... (they're holding back...) the time has come to….)_

Fuck. Yeah. He could do this. He could so fucking do this.  
_(the time has come to… Galvanize!)_

He paused, fingers on the keys, and sat back.

 _Aw shit, that means I have to start_ talking _at one of these sessions._

Well, beat the fuck out of the other options.


	3. Chapter 3

“It’s not that I precisely _mind_ that Barton is doing better. I mean, apart from his complete inability to refrain from sass, now that he’s started talking,” Jasper found himself saying as he and Agent Coulson walked slowly down the corridor together after a late-night background briefing for one of Agent Hand’s teams, due to take off in the early hours. Coulson had been more involved in the threat analysis and logistics than usual, and he’d dragged Jasper in-- largely because he didn’t think Agent Sitwell’s life was hellish enough lately, as far as Jasper could tell.

He saw Coulson frequently these days; it seemed like there was always some excuse for him to get dragged into and out of meetings, or pulled into the cafeteria for a quick chat around the coffee pot-- which Coulson seemed magnetically drawn to like it was his own private true north. The attention was more flattering than Jasper wanted to admit, especially since other agents had started side-eyeing him since Coulson had begun pulling him into briefings with the Big Boys. 

Of course, Jasper Sitwell was familiar with the side-eye phenomenon. He’d gotten that “are you entirely sure you belong here” stare so damned often that by the time he was ten it’d stopped affecting him. (It had started affecting him again in middle school-- a horrible new school-new country- new accent- new classmates- new hormones perfect storm that he’d emerged from sometime in Basic.) By the time he’d come to SHIELD he’d already lost his ability to give a fuck-- which was probably why Coulson liked him. 

Speaking of that fucker, on their way out of the meeting he’d turned the subject to Barton, and Jasper was going to make damn sure to take the opportunity to remind Coulson he’d already made his work hard enough for one lifetime.

“He’s surprisingly high maintenance these days. He has this habit of bringing haphazardly annotated forms into my office and leaving them on my chair while I’m out. I don’t know how the fuck he does it so quickly. I can be gone for as little as a minute and a half and return to find another pile.” They were always half-filled in ballpoint scrawl, with a post-it on the top reading “for signature.” It was surprisingly irritating.

The most memorable had his name at the top and nothing else. That had been the one Jasper had sent back with a post-it of his own reading “you do not get partial credit for writing your name.” Apparently Barton had a way of generating new and unusual fucks for Jasper to give.

Coulson shrugged and pushed open the door to the cafeteria, saying as he did:

“But apart from that he’s doing better? Dr. Hileman’s report suggested she was worried about possible PTSD?” 

The cafeteria was emptier than usual, even considering the time of evening. Agent May sat all alone at a table in the middle, reading with her feet up on the table. There was a small stuffed bear-- a limited edition Captain America-- staring at her from a position near her boots, looking eager with its head-wings poking straight out to either side. She glanced up and nodded at Jasper and Coulson before returning to her book.

“Yeah. Nothing likely to keep him out of the field-- your standard ‘he’s about as fucked up as any normal field agent, not a danger to himself or others.’ She won’t tell me more--she says it’s not relevant enough to break confidentiality.” He followed Coulson over to the coffee pot; it seemed like that was the only place he ever saw the agent heading for (besides the Director’s office). 

“Weekly appointments for the time being, I take it? Good.” Coulson looked down at his mug as he poured lukewarm caffeinated sludge into it. “He’s actually going?”

“He’s actually going. And-- get this. Half the paperwork he brings me these days? Doctor’s appointments. He started here and he couldn’t wait to get the fuck out of medical, now he’s there all the time-- half of them are specialists. I’m beginning to worry I recruited my own grandmother. I-- why are you laughing, sir?”

Because goddamnit if Coulson wasn’t, near-invisible jerks of his shoulder. Damn him, he didn’t get to laugh at the mountain of fucking paperwork his supposedly-lone wolf agent was bringing Jasper. Not when Coulson’d been the one pushing Barton on him every step of the goddamn way.

“No reason,” Coulson said, damn him. “I’m just impressed with your agent, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Jasper said, far more confused than anything. He looked back at Agent May as they exited the cafeteria. “Hey-- is tonight it?”

“It is indeed. I’m off to Director Fury’s office. He doesn’t like to miss the night.” Coulson took a sip of coffee and paused, looking away as he asked “D’you think Barton will be taking part?”

“I highly doubt it-- that’s one thing he hasn’t done yet much: talk with anyone besides me. Wish to hell I knew why he picks me to not be tongue-tied with.”

“Well. You do know how to fill in an exceptional form.” 

Coulson’s face was fucking blank, and Jasper could only look over at him in betrayal.  
___

Just for the record, Clint wanted it noted that it was the only thing on late-night TV that hadn’t seemed likely to either make him want to smother himself under one of the musty burlap couch cushions, or give him a case of the shakes (or both at once). 

That was the reason he was watching it, one arm loosely curling a pillow against his chest as he slouched into the couch. It had nothing to do with the rack on the older brunette at all. (It was a really nice rack, though.) Or the muscles on the guy in the plaid shirt who dispensed coffee with a surly look. (Which…really, what more did you need out of life?) And Clint was certainly not enjoying the rapid-fire banter, not even when the younger brunette started spouting off about invitation fairies and then they all hung up. 

Nor was he getting teary about the nice rack getting teary about talking to her daughter. Nope. (And even if he was, Dr. Hileman was the only one who had to know. Okay, she didn’t, but… she might. Get to. Depending on how babbly he was feeling.) 

_God, I could use some coffee myself about now._

Anyway, the nice thing about it was it was all so far out of his experience that he could use it to just turn his mind off and stop thinking so goddamn much. And it was a rerun, so he could look it up online and make sure it didn’t end badly or have unexpected flood scenes or anything else… unsettling. He could trust himself to watch it somewhere other than in the privacy of his own closet of a room.

Dr. Hileman had suggested that hanging out more outside his own quarters would be a good thing. She’d never said it had to be when other people might actually be in the TV lounge or anything, so here he was. Feeling virtuous. And possibly both slightly lustful and a bit confused.

The door creaked open behind him, and Clint froze. He kept his eyes on the tv, now featuring the skinny brunette and a WASP talking about some fuschia drink. The prickles on the back of his neck, then left arm, alerted him to the intruder.

It all happened in a rush; the body coming over the couch, Clint grabbing it by the collar and throwing it to the floor, one knee coming to rest on the chest.

“I give-- uncle! Dude-- I fucking give already!”

Clint dropping the shirt and pushing back onto the couch.

“What the fuck?” he asked, pretty damn eloquently, he thought. The man on the floor made big imploring eyes and shushed him, popping up to look over the couch and out the door. He was dressed in standard-issue black SHIELD fatigues, which uncoiled the knot in Clint’s shoulders just slightly.

“Quiet, quiet, dude-- just, act natural, okay?” he said as he dipped back down below the couch, practically settling in between Clint’s legs-- at which point Clint recognized him.

It was doesn't-know-shit-guy from Goddell’s orbital assets review. 

Literally hiding between Clint’s thighs.

Because life wasn’t weird enough already.

“Fine, but give me a blow job while you’re down there, bud,” Clint told him, because apparently Dr. Hileman had a _hell_ of a lot of work still ahead of her.

(Unless Clint was about to get his ass booted for sexual harassment, or for fighting.)

Doesn’t-know-shit-guy-- what the fuck was his name?-- stared straight at Clint’s package, thus pretty much doubling down, then back up at Clint. He opened his mouth to reply.

Light flooded the room, and Clint flailed around to glare at the door, blinking.

“Sorry, sorry!” said the blonde in the doorway. She was dressed in a set of night ops fatigues, complete with night vision goggles like a headband, which was a little abnormal even for SHIELD after hours. “Barton, isn’t it?” Clint nodded. He’d seen her before, right? Couple different seminars, maybe down at the range. 

Oh, right, and on the practice mats, when they were doing stick work. She was _damn good_ with a staff. Heh. “Have you seen Esterhazy?” she continued, and between his legs, doesn’t-know-shit shook his head frantically. Clint shrugged. She looked at him a long moment, then past him at the tv, then back at him. “Thanks anyway, Barton.”

She looked just as nice going as she had coming. When she was gone, doesn’t-know-- Esterhazy, apparently-- leaned back and winked up at Barton.

“Thanks man, I owe you.” 

“Yeah? What the fuck’s going on, then?” Clint asked, still staring. Didn’t the guy even remember orbital review? Brazil and palmwood bows? Getting smacked the fuck down? 

“You’re shitting me, right?” Esterhazy said, and leaned back on his elbows. “First of all, I’m shocked you’re not playing, Mr. I-Don’t-Need-A-GPS-to-Kick-Your-Ass,” (that answered that question), “second of all, I don’t believe for a minute you don’t know it’s Capture the Cap.”

“That’s… too fuckin’ bad, because I didn’t know it. You gonna enlighten me? And get out from between my legs, too, man, unless you’re planning on doing something useful down there.”

Esterhazy got out from between his legs, and folded his lanky form onto the couch, slouched low enough to be invisible. 

“Man. If you really don’t know, my odds just got a lot better. You’re the one I figured would beat us all.” Clint raised his eyebrows and made a gesture that he hoped properly conveyed _please to explain_ mixed with _right now, you fucking asshole_ and _seriously_. Esterhazy started laughing, a low rolling chuckle.

He did explain, though. Midway through, Clint put his head in his hands, because it had suddenly occurred to him that he was mixed in with a bunch of kids.

Okay, so, they were mostly his age. Some older. Came from the Army and Navy and FBI and Interpol and wherever, but holy mother of fuck, they were so young. Or maybe SHIELD was making them young. And these were the ones SHIELD considered too advanced to send off to the Academy! Any way you looked at it, where the hell was an ex-merc ex-circus act who’d never gotten to be a real boy supposed to fit in? Clint could vaguely-- very vaguely-- remember capture the flag shit from the orphanage, some damn lifetime ago now.

_See, this is what happens when you put yourself out there in public spaces, Doctor. You end up realizing just how much you’re never gonna fit in with anyone anyway._

Because: Capture the fucking Cap? Did they even-- why would SHIELD even let bunches of probies race around HQ trying-- fucking _trying_ to take each other out in a race to be the first to-- oh. 

Clint realized he had been maybe laughing a little too long when he looked up to find Esterhazy edging away from him like he was… not quite balanced.

It was the smartest thing the guy’d done since he came into the room.

“I get it now,” he said. “All right, well, I’ll check the coast is clear, then you can scoot okay?” Deal made and--amusingly--shaken on, he padded over to the door.

The coast was not clear. The coast was being watched, from a very discreet distance, by the blonde in the black tac suit, and Clint spent a moment memorizing the smirk on her face when she saw him, before he closed the door.

“Morse is still out there? I’m screwed,” Esterhazy said, seeing his face. Clint shrugged and smiled. 

“You could always go up,” he said, and pointed at the drop ceiling. Esterhazy looked at it, then back at him, then at it.

“The fuck you say.”

“The fuck I do.”

“It’d never hold my weight.”

“Doesn’t have to for long. This room and the next were partitioned after the ceiling went in. Just get up, drop down the other side. Door over there is on another wall. Need a boost?” Clint held out his hands invitingly, even as part of him was screaming that letting the jackass get him in that vulnerable of a position was a horrible idea.

_Yeah, but he could have bit my balls off by now, if he’d really wanted to._

After giving Clint a once-over about as thorough as a full body cavity search, Esterhazy put his hands on his hips, looked him over, and said:

“You go first.”

“Me? Why the fuck would I want to do that?”

“Why not? What else are you going to do tonight? Sit here and stare at Lauren Graham’s rack?” They both glanced back at the tv. It was a _really_ nice rack.

“It could be I was staring at that dude’s biceps,” Clint pointed out, then froze.

“Either way,” Esterhazy said, as if it really didn’t matter a fuck, “you could be helping me teach all these probie dorks a lesson.”

 _You’re not a probie dork?_ Clint thought to himself. But he said, he _said_ “You just want my mad skills on your team.” 

“Damn right I do. Deal?”

Oh, what the hell. The stupid tv show had turned all angsty anyway. All the boobs and biceps in the world weren’t going to make up for that. 

And conversation with an actual human-- who wasn’t his S.O. or his therapist-- was proving just a little bit intoxicating.

“Deal.” Esterhazy was already looking up towards the ceiling, so he didn’t spot the blush that flashed across Clint’s face as he said it, thank everything.

 _Hey, Dr. Hileman, you suck. You can stop being right any time now._  
____

“So Drummer, Morse, and Woo are still on the wrong floor, and Sitwell tells me Peckenham got stuck in the vents around the office level-- he and Quartermain had to go find a ladder and some grease. Esterhazy’s off the radar right now.” Phil turned to close Director Fury’s office door as they left, hearing the comforting little snick of tumblers engaging. It brought him enough time to fall in at Fury’s left heel without it appearing at all calculated.

Not that his nonchalant act fooled Fury for half a minute, but it made an impressive sight when the two entered or left rooms and it was second-nature now. If he went back out in the field, who would haunt Nick’s every step?

“Huh,” Fury stuffed his hands behind his back, causing his long black coat to bell out like the tail of a particularly hardcore raven. Phil side-eyed it. “Not an impressive lot so far. I’m not sure we’ll get much useful data out of this year’s crop. That leaves us with who unaccounted for? Srinivasan and Barton?”

“Srinivasan’s off-campus tonight, sir. Sick cat. Just Barton. He was last seen in the third-floor lounge, ignoring everyone.” Still. Despite Sitwell’s updates, Phil had yet to catch Barton interacting with anyone outside of official business. He had, at least, started talking when asked questions-- Phil had caught his voice floating around the corners of corridors more than once, sometimes light, sometimes rough, never with the same flirtatious bounce it had in his memory.

“Still?” Fury’s question was so close to Phil’s own thoughts that it took him a startled moment before he realized he was supposed to respond. By then, the Director had moved on with “Didn't you and Sitwell think that was social anxiety or PTSD or something?”

“Because those are treated so very quickly, yes,” Phil deadpanned. Fury’d never give him the satisfaction of a wince, but his next words were a little softer.

“It may be time to consider, Phil, that your pet probie’s just naturally a surly asshole. It’s nothing SHIELD hasn’t worked with before. We can handle it.” It was something Phil had considered, of course. Chris hadn’t been a surly asshole-- well, he hadn’t been surly-- but he’d only really seen that one flash, possibly two, of Chris in Clint Barton in all the months he’d been at SHIELD. Clint Barton, now, could easily just be a surly bastard. The evidence was certainly in favor of it. Perhaps Chris had been merely a week’s sunny sweaty aberration. Or else dead and gone on the other side of whatever chasms Barton had crossed to get here at all.

“Agent Sitwell is still hopeful,” Phil responded. “Meanwhile, I see nothing to complain about in Barton’s performance.” Agent Sitwell was still frustrated, was what he was. He had recently started growing out his shorn head just for the satisfaction, he had told Phil, of being able to pull out his hair. Since he’d started shaving his head due to encroaching baldness even worse than Phil’s own shockingly sudden acquisition of a very high forehead, it was impressive evidence of his state of mind. 

“Unless you count the fact that both our range instructors seem to have developed unrequited crushes on the man, no,” Fury snorted. He reached out and set his palm to the biometric scanner on the door in front of them, and the two of them slipped quietly through the double metal doors into the cool dark. Motors hummed from the corners; the refrigerators cooling and clicking along through the night. Phil caught a glimpse of his own reflection, straight and tucked away, gliding along against the brushed stainless steel, red in the reflection from the exit sign that glowed over the doors.

“I think anyone who’s seen him shoot would sympathize,” Phil said, and was promptly glad that he’d lost the ability to blush somewhere a few years back. Possibly in the sands of Kandahar. 

“Hmmph, well. I watched a couple times. Yet to swoon. I’ll grant you though, he’s one badass motherfucker with that bow of his. We can use him, Phil; stop worrying that we’re going to turn your protégé out on the street.”

“I’m-- he’s not.” They’d been whispering since they hit the kitchen doors, and Phil’s protest was a vehement hiss. Now, they were nearly to the service counters, and there was enough light shining from the cafeteria that he could see Fury’s eyebrows raise and his quizzical glare around that fucking patch. “He’s not.”

“Sitwell sent up a request to get him flight training.” Fury said it casually enough, just a bare edge of sound above the puff of air. 

“That…” was actually a pretty goddamn good idea, if Phil said so himself, “... is actually a decent idea, sir. Barton comes out of his shell more when he has something challenging to distract him; maybe that will help.”

He got a _long_ look in response to that, and tried to meet it as blandly as he possibly could. _Nothing to see here, sir. Move along, move along._

“You do realize you give him special treatment, right, Phil?”

“I-- no. I don’t. I don't even talk to him. I just think--”

“You do. I don’t damn well care; I hired you to fix my personnel problem, you can do what you want with him. But please stop trying to kid me, Phil. Huh, you’ve got May on Bear watch?” He cocked his chin to gesture at the lone figure in the empty cafeteria.

Agent May had not moved since Phil’s earlier coffee run, though she was about a half-inch further into her book. The barest tilt of her head proved she’d noticed him and the Director come in. Phil smiled to himself at that, perhaps a little more complacently than was quite safe for his ego.

“She’s another of your winners, I know, Phil. Congratulations on rescuing her from cargo plane duty. So when are you going to stop messing around and get out there in the field? She’s languishing on the anti-smuggling unit, you could put her to some real use.”

“After this, maybe. She’s on my short list. I mostly need to identify a few S.O.s to have in frequent rotation.”

“You’ve got Pao; you mentioned Quartermain, and you’ve got Sitwell, who else do you need?”

“Sitwell?” Phil forgot his watch on the Captain America Bear, its little wings absurdly cocky and bright in the low light, and Melinda May, in favor of turning to stare his boss in the face. Fury looked guileless-- actually guileless, not Fury guileless, which was about as innocent as your average crocodile. “I hadn’t had him on the list.”

“Why the fuck not? He’s been your protégé since he came on here, and you’ve put a shitload of trust in him this year. Fucker’s stepped up well, too. He still turtles up when he sees me, and I question his recent hairstyle choices, but he’s done everything you asked for, and done it well. I thought this was what you wanted for him?”

“I do! I just--” really _really_ can’t use him on any of my teams, because that means I’d inevitably end up using Clint Barton on them and that would not end well for any of us-- “hadn’t thought he was ready. Yet.” Sorry, Jasper.

He met Fury’s stare calmly. This was not a decision he was uncertain about. Fury finally turned back to his vigil, and Phil turned with him. 

Out in the room, May reached out idly to pet the Captain America bear on the head, squishing him as she did, ruffling his wings, and sending the signal _all clear here. No hostiles all night._

Fury was likely right; it was going to be a slow night. It wasn’t that the current crop of probies wasn’t good (of course they were good-- all of them were transfers or other special circumstances, already considered competent agents in their old lines of work, otherwise they’d have been back at the Ops Academy like the rest of the wet-behind-the-ears). It was that everyone at HQ was better, and no-one wanted to be the one who later found out they’d let a probie get to Cap. In Phil’s first year at SHIELD, he’d seen an agent transfer to the Hub in Europe after the bear had been spirited out past him in the front of a particularly buxom probie’s hoodie. 

Capture the Cap was childish, it was absurd, and it was one of the best ways Nick Fury had ever found to assess security readiness at HQ. The security teams drilled all year for it, and a major overhaul of the vents-- including the one that had caught Peckenham-- had been undertaken two years back based on data gleaned during an especially memorable run. They didn’t have to do things like this out at the Sandbox, or even over at the Hub, places that had real attack threats on a regular basis. (Of course, anyone who thought New York was safe these days was-- well. Was reading their risk assessments properly, likely. It was amazing how few people knew how to do that. Phil would still take New York over most any other posting in the world for sheer security. It chafed like hell, if he was honest.)

Phil rolled his eyes once a year when Cap came out of his little glass-fronted case in Fury’s office, and just went with it. SHIELD needed a little levity from time to time, for all it took out of them. He’d just opened his mouth to whisper some of that, when a shadow moved behind Agent May, and he snapped his mouth shut. 

Fury’d noticed too. He was leaning forward, a muttered _what the hell_ slipping from his lips, and reminding Phil forcibly of several earlier times he’d met the man, long before SHIELD.

Kosovo. That was a Kosovo look.

Fuck Kosovo.

The shadow was creeping, infinitesimally slowly, down and to May’s left, nearly into her sight line if she’d looked up. Not that she needed to-- a slight tensing about the shoulders indicated she knew what was coming. Phil realized he was holding his breath.

Even braced for something, he was still shocked by the moment when the projectile hit Cap and he tumbled off the table into the clutching hands that shot up to meet him. May was kicking out even as Cap fell, and she caught the shadow on the kneecap.

“Have to do better than that,” Fury muttered, as May reached down to grab at the rapidly retreating man-- probably the missing Agent Esterhazy. He was fast, he was sleek, but Melinda May was going to pulverize him for even getting within a yard of her, and he was never going to make it to the--

_ping! clink! rattle! clonk! ptink!_

Another projectile bounced, in rapid succession, off the edge of the soda dispenser, a light fixture, around the rim of a metal mixing bowl left on the counter to Phil’s right, against a dish cart near the cafeteria entrance, and hit the paddle switch on the wall.

The entire cafeteria plunged into darkness. 

Out in the black of the cavernous room, there was a sound like several tables and an infuriated Agent falling over together, followed by skittering.

Next to him, he could hear-- heaven help him-- Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD, breathing in helpless gasps as he laughed. It was a full out chortle.

“A pea shooter!” He practically squealed. “A motherfuckin’ pea shooter!”

The lights came back on to reveal him nearly doubled over, leather-clad shoulders shaking. Three tables had, indeed fallen over in the cafeteria, and Melinda May was glowering with her hand on the paddle-switch by the door, Bear-less. 

At the corner of the cafeteria, a panel dropped from the ceiling in pieces, revealing a foot clad in a combat boot. It was gone, followed by a curse, before anyone could move.

In the silence that followed, Nick Fury pulled himself up.

“All right, Agent Coulson,” he rumbled from his full height, putting his best Director of SHIELD face on. “Point made. He’s been bored. But we’re not renovating the entire cafeteria based on a threat assessment of Agent Barton’s abilities with a pea shooter. Waste of time.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter the racial epithet tags are referring to. Just so you know.

His frequent grumbles to Coulson aside, Jasper had decided he mostly didn’t mind Clint Barton. When he’d first met the guy he hadn’t, he could admit now, been prepared to be a Supervising Officer. It hadn’t been that long since Agent Quartermain had been his. However, he thought he’d done a pretty good job with Barton so far, all things considered. Everyone else seemed to think so, too.

Barton had done unexpectedly well in his training and orientation courses, and expectedly spectacularly on the range. 

He’d had even made his first friend during the Capture the Cap. Esterhazy was, in turn, slowly introducing him to others: Woo, Drummer, Morse. Jasper wondered if Barton understood that he’d somehow fallen in with the nerd crowd.

It reflected nicely on Jasper, and Jasper had reciprocated by assaying his first solo battles against red tape. Battered and bruised by HR, he emerged victorious from the fray bearing a set of exemptions to several of the standard courses, in favor of getting Barton into flight training.

He hadn’t been expecting a hug, really, but something other than Barton’s murmured “oh, yes, trusting me with several million dollars of equipment is a good idea” would have been nice. Still, flight training was turning into a success. Granted, Agent May-- who was on training duty after losing the bear-- had sent him through the human centrifuge a few extra times “just to make sure he knows what he’s getting into,” but Barton himself seemed to feel that was just desserts, and honor had been satisfied all around. 

So, all in all, Jasper’d thought Barton was getting better. And Barton had never had problems with _him_ in specific, anyway. He should have been feeling grateful towards his agent, he knew that. Even if, the better Barton got, the more Coulson slipped back into the background.

That dated from Capture the Cap, too-- Coulson starting to withdraw, the invitations to high-level briefings diminishing. 

Unexpectedly, he missed it. Well-- the briefings themselves, he missed. The feeling like he was the kid in the corner expected to keep his mouth shut so no one remembered to send him out of the room was a subtle form of torture to be endured. The feeling of being in the know, though, of being asked his opinion, even, on rare occasion-- that was heady shit.

And apparently of short duration. He was trying not to resent Barton too much; how the hell could it be his fault, after all? Correlation, not causation, for fuck’s sake, Jasper. 

So if Jasper’d failed some unseen test, it wasn’t Barton’s fault.

He looked over at Barton now, leaning back in the chair across from his desk, and clearly contemplating putting his feet up on the desk (there wasn’t room to tilt the chair back that far without hitting the wall, but Jasper didn’t trust Barton not to try anyway), and tried not to grind his teeth.

A fresh heap of forms sat underneath his hands; he’d been getting them nearly daily the last couple of months, and it was really fucking absurd at this point. He sighed, and gave an experimental tug at the short fuzz on his scalp. Not _quite_ long enough to pull out yet. (Though long enough that Cecelia had started to purr whenever she ran her hand back and forward over it and-- god. Not thinking about that now.)

“Teeth this time, Barton?” he asked, tapping at the top form on the pile. “Added to hearing tests last time and the optometrist and the ENT specialists and even the podiatrist? Not to mention the acupuncturist, the chiropractor, and the-- what the hell is an otolaryngologist? Between these and the weekly psych visits, I think you’re spending more time in medical than out of it. What’s this?”

“Hey, you _told_ me SHIELD had good benefits. I’m just taking advantage.” Barton leaned back in his chair and pushed his knees against the desk, all the while trying to shrug nonchalantly.

“You certainly are.”

“No, but seriously, how good do you think the benefits package is for a freelance assassin, really? Or a contractor for a security firm? SHIELD considers these guys a benefit, then I’m going to take as much as I can.” Jasper found himself shrugging-- it was hard to argue, considering the way the nurses had side-eyed him when Jasper had brought Barton in. _As if they don’t see worse coming back from the field every day_ , he’d thought. 

But _thoroughly mangled_ and _lastingly fucked up_ were two different kinds of bad.

“Still, Barton, the podiatrist? What’s wrong with your feet?” Both of them glanced down at the combat boot-clad items in question, tapping restlessly against the thin plywood wall of Jasper’s desk.

“Nothing, yet, but I figured I’d case him out, decide how much I want something to _be_ wrong with my feet.”

“And meanwhile, I get to fill out all the forms for this. Barton, how did you even find out all of this existed? I’ve been trying to get a referral to this guy for years.”

“Hey, Google’s a thing, man. Sir.” 

Jasper glared at him a long moment, but Barton was doing that _what me I’m just a dumb hick_ look that he seemed to think actually fooled people. (It fooled people. It just didn’t fucking fool Jasper, who had his own goddamn version, all right?)

“Right, well, could you actually _complete_ them, for once?”

“But you’re so much better at that, sir. HMO intake forms should have been listed on the torture memos under examples of enhanced interrogation methods.”

“You think I like them any better? You must have a pretty high opinion of my ability to withstand torture, Agent.” 

That got him a brief flash of teeth.

“Hey, you’ve withstood me for months now. Gotta give you props. Either you’ve got a pretty high tolerance, or you’re a fuckin’ masochist, sir.” 

Jasper put his head down briefly and laughed, even though he didn’t want to.

“Possibly. Or possibly the alternative is worse.” 

“Than me? No,” the playfully scandalized tone of voice went a long way to reducing Jasper’s headache. “I don’t believe it, sir, what could be worse than babysitting my ass?”

Jasper met smile for smile, knowing his was stretched as thin as Barton’s.

“I got to choose between babysitting you, as you put it, and being the liaison for an ongoing human trafficking investigation down in Nuevo Laredo.” SHIELD didn’t care about the garden-variety type, but the general mass of undocumented immigrants coming through was sometimes used to hide people SHIELD cared very _much_ about, and Hand had been trying to stem the flow for months. 

“Yeah? Liaising with who?”

“CISEN-- Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional, kinda Mexico’s CIA,” Jasper clarified, in case Barton had been sleeping through that part of his International Intelligence Agencies review. He got waved off impatiently for his trouble.

“Yeah, yeah, I know ‘em. Avoid ‘em like the plague, since that one time.” _Since that one time_ , oddly, was also a step forward. Barton’s past had been strictly topic non grata for nearly the entire time he’d been at SHIELD. “Now I _know_ you’re masochistic, sir. You’d give up that kind of posting for little ol’ me?”

“You think pretty highly of yourself if you think you’re more aggravating than an entire security agency, Barton.” Jasper said, raising his eyebrow gently. 

“Yeah, all right, but seriously, isn’t that more your style?”

“Is it?” God no, it really wasn’t, but what had given Barton the impression otherwise? When the hell had he ever let drop the least inclination towards being set up as a fall-guy and bureaucratic roadblock? Did he have some kind of "kick me, I'm a nonentity" sign on his back?

“Well, you know,” Barton waved vaguely at him, “that’s your background, right?”

Aw. No. Fuck. No. This kind of shit was what Jasper’d been trying to avoid. He wanted that shit, he'd have been in Nuevo Laredo by now. Fuck that, he'd have been in some nice backwater consulate in Costa Rica or something.

“My background?” He kept his voice as bland as possible, even as his stomach plummeted. Perhaps… perhaps he should have expected this; better people had done it to him. Barton was looking at him oddly now, beginning to fidget. 

“Well, by background... well, I mean am I supposed to be not noticing that you're, um? Latino?” That was followed by a quiet gulp, like Barton was beginning to realize the trap was closing. Jasper could feel it starting to creep around his ankle, too-- it was old and familiar by this point. The headache had come rushing back and he dragged off his glasses and set them on the desk, then returned his gaze to Barton’s. 

“It would be hard not to notice.” 

“Yeah.” Barton relaxed at that, poor kid. Jasper had to remind himself that Barton was, really was, just an ignorant kid. He tried. He really did.

“And that means what?” He asked, folding his hands and attempting to settle back in his chair.

“You, um, get where these people are coming from?” Coulson’d given Barton to him. He’d spent time and effort and serious brownie points with HR on Barton. _Remember?_

“The kind of people one meets on a human trafficking and smuggling op?” At some point, Barton was going to shut up, right? This was the point at which, if he'd stayed in the military, he'd have been expected to pull rank and shut shit down. It was one of the reasons he hadn't stayed in the military-- he'd never made a convincing hard-ass. And it was about to come back and bite him in the squishy parts.

“Well... yeah.”

“Barton... are you suggesting I was or have known many a wetback?” Jasper would have liked to keep it as calm, as cool, as Agent Coulson, do the suave takedown. He would have liked not to have spit out that epithet. But it had been a long day and a long week, and it wasn’t like Coulson was going to fucking know and he just snapped, feeling himself flush to the roots of his already-thinning black hair. “What the FUCK, Agent Barton?” 

One. Two. Three. Fou-- and Barton’s face dropped and he put his head on the desk with an audible thump.

“Aw _fuck_. No, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry....” He trailed off, mumbling. “Didn’t mean... oh shit, no, sir, I meant... I meant you were good at... shit. I mean you know the language, right? And um, could blend in and shit. Sorry sorry sorry.” 

Even through the slowly-receding fiery rage haze, Jasper felt vaguely bad, as he seemed to have broken his specialist.

“Agent Barton,” he said, trying to force a note of levity into his voice (What Would Coulson Do?), “I’m not sure whether I would be more insulted if you were implying that my people were wetbacks, or that you say you’re implying that I should know how to work with the Mexican intelligence agency because I also happen to have people who came from somewhere in Central or South America in my ancestry. Would you like a do-over?” 

“Yes, please. Sorry, I just didn’t think....”

“That was pretty fucking obvious.”

“I mean, I don’t think of you as--”

“Do you think there’s any fucking way that sentence is going to end that isn’t going to involve you knee-deep in shit, Specialist?”

“Shutting up now, sir.”

“Look, just... get out of my hair will you? We’ll talk about this tomorrow,” Jasper managed to grind out, between the sickness that was forcing itself up to his teeth. Because he couldn’t… just couldn’t do it now. Couldn’t sort out what was ignorant honky archer kid versus what was the remnants of his own corner-of-the-playground issues coming up. 

After Barton left his office, Jasper did the only thing he could think of. He went to find Agent Coulson.

Who fucking _owed_ him. 

__

It had been legitimately going _well_ , Clint wanted to wail to the universe. Wanted to hear it echo into the space between the stars-- where it would be worth shit. Which was exactly what it was worth down here on Earth.

 _Stupid fucking idiot ruining always all your chances asshole fuck_ he repeated like a mantra while he threw clothes into his duffel bag. Tomorrow was gonna come and he was gonna get kicked out on his ass, so it was probably better to pack now. 

He couldn’t even say he hadn’t seen it coming, because hadn’t he been having this same conversation with himself in this same room not that many months ago? He just should have gone then, before he’d gotten _attached._

Attached to the cafeteria and the three different shooting ranges, attached to the podiatrist and the optometrist and the chiropractor, attached to the stupid-ass psychiatrist who had made him get attached to his goddamn friend-ish-people. 

Hell, he might even be a little bit attached to that fucking wire-rimmed asshole he’d just managed to ruin his relationship with. Sitwell had been better to him than anyone from even MacKenzie’s had been, frankly. Hell, better than half the people in the circus-- _oh shit no, Clint, you’re gonna have to be a hell of a lot more screwed than_ this _before you bring that up again_. 

Two battered paperback novels, picked up from some motel room somewhere and carried with him since, were shoved into a corner of the duffel, and his shaving kit followed it. Clint stared down at his personal life, all conveniently packed up and ready to be humped out as soon as he was given marching orders.

The hell of it was, he wasn’t actually that much of a jerk. Usually. Hell, he’d been a merc; he’d worked with enough people from enough really strange backgrounds to know you didn’t just make assumptions. Not if you wanted to avoid a lot of black eyes. He was actually counted pretty good-- for a gringo, if he did call himself that-- at not falling into typical fucking tourista traps. 

_But you’re really good at fucking up your own life, so clearly you were just saving it all up for the worst possible moment._

Which obviously wasn’t when he had _first_ joined SHIELD, no. The universe wanted him to wait until he actually _liked_ the damned place. And the damned people.

Would Sitwell do it himself, or would he have someone from HR do it? At a meeting, or would someone come to his room? He hadn’t seemed to enjoy shows of power, but what did Clint really know about him?

_Oh, hi, here’s your problem, jackass. Couldn’t be bothered even to ask your damn S.O. about himself._

“Fuck,” Clint moaned, and collapsed on to the mattress next to his duffel, staring up at the ceiling. 

He could just lay there and stare until morning. He’d get his answer one way or another.

 _Of course,_ he rolled over suddenly, blinking at his hands on the dingy sheets as the thought exploded into him so hard it opened his head up, _last time I was here, they were trying to get me to talk to a damned psych._

“Yeah, Dr. Hileman?” he was saying into the phone, before he’d even realized he had it in his hand and had dialed-- as if the however-many rings before it had flipped to voice mail had passed in an eyeblink-- “This is Clint Barton. You said call you any time? So, can you, um, call me back? I’ll just… oh… um… is that you on the other line? Hold on, hold on… stupid goddamn voice mail… Dr. Hileman? Hi, um-- have you got a minute for me?”

As it turned out, she had at least 60 for him, despite the hour.  
____

It was late in the evening and the cafeteria was mostly deserted, but Jasper knew his mentor’s haunts and sure enough, he was nose-deep in the coffee pot. They retreated to a table in the middle of the room, where they each had an eye on the exits and no possible way of being crowded by the imaginary throngs. Jasper laid out the conversation in as neutral a tone of voice as he ever possessed, and Coulson didn’t react in that way Coulson had of not reacting to anything much. Oh, there was a twitch of the lips here, a wrinkling of the brow there, and Jasper figured he’d gotten about as good as anyone outside of Director Fury at reading those. What he didn’t expect was for Coulson to flat-out sigh and look down at the end of the narrative, rubbing his face in his hands.

That was possible-coup-on-small-Caribbean-islands territory for Coulson.

“Oh, god, sir, was I really that bad?” Jasper said before he could stop himself, and Coulson looked back up at him and huffed with amusement.

“No, I was being thankful I wasn’t going to have to come scrape a specialist pancake off your ceiling, Jasper,” he said. _Jasper._ Well, this was an interesting development. “Which I would have sympathized with. Tell me, what do you think Barton meant?” In other words, should he be bringing HR into it? The option had not actually occurred to Jasper. He thought it over for all of three seconds.

“I think... honestly, I really don’t think he was talking, or even thinking, about illegal immigrants, he just meant he thought I’d suit the posting well, sir-- Coulson.” 

“Phil’s fine. That bothers you.” 

“Yes, very much.” Chafed horribly, really. “It’s a lot of assumptions.”

“Were they unwarranted in this case?” Coulson leaned forward. “Or, to put it another way, were they any different than the assumptions Agent Hand made, either?”

No, and not different than assumptions quite a few other agents had made, which was why he’d refused that fucking op, in favor of becoming, apparently, the kind of S.O. that his assets just walked all over. 

“I suppose not,” he allowed, “But that doesn’t mean they’re a good set of assumptions to make. I don’t… I suppose I don’t like being fit into a pigeonhole that way. Like he never bothered to look past my damned face. I thought--” Then Jasper braced himself for the inevitable _what a specialist thinks about you shouldn’t matter_ , but of course Coulson had to sit back and just stare at him, like he was cataloging him afresh in his mind.

“I had _you_ pulling his history for a reason, Jasper. He’s not exactly the best socialized asset we’ve ever brought in, and we’ve brought in some doozies. I suspect most of his life he’s been less interested in who other people are, and more in what they might do to him. There’s very little trust there, god knows. After the circus and the burglaries, I’m amazed he got near enough MacKenzie to do 1099 work. I’m amazed he didn’t just have you shoot him. He’s got a good sense of self-preservation, but he’s not used to being a company man. Which I’d hoped would be a good fit for the two of you, since one of the things I prize about you is that you aren’t a good company man, either. You just put a better face on it than he does. From what you say, he’s not being actively insubordinate, and I count that as a minor miracle. And good work on your part.”

“Seriously? Because I feel like I’m in a leaky rowboat with half an oar, sir. Phil.”

“I can’t think of another handler who would do better, Jasper. However, on that head? I owe you an apology.” Jasper stopped rubbing his hands over his stubble and stared at that. Phil gave a wry little twist, not really a smile, back at him. “He’s not exactly an easy first assignment. He wouldn’t be easy for a veteran S.O. to handle. Might be worse. You’ve got better instincts than most of them, so I kept my distance. I should have been giving you better support, this whole time.”

“You had been,” Jasper said, and then choked on _for a while_. Phil looked sharply at him, as if he knew exactly what Jasper had been going to say.

“I noticed he’s started to socialize more?” was all Phil said. He got up and went to get the coffee pot. Instead of filling his mug, he brought the pot over to the table and set it down, turning it precisely.

“A little, sir. In some of his classes, anyway. I even caught him giving tracking lessons to Woo and Esterhazy the other day. He seems to hang out with them more often than anyone else.” Phil snorted.

“You noticed the pattern there, Jasper?”

“He’s... bartering for friendship?”

“Not quite, but close enough. He feels more comfortable when he’s not beholden to anyone. You two did well enough early on, but now you’re starting to accrue all sorts of power over him. Think about what you know about him, about what you do for him, and think about what he knows about you.”

“Isn’t that the point? I’m his S.O. He isn’t supposed to need to know anything about me, I’m just supposed to support him.” However unfair that seemed.

“Barton’s never going to work that way, Jasper. He’ll give you respect when you earn it, not because you’re an authority figure. And sometimes he’ll buck just to buck, and he’ll be stupid about it. Assuming you still want him after this, you’re going to have to figure out how to handle him without, well, _handling_ him. Ask yourself what you have to barter with.”

Jasper finished his coffee, and stared at the bottom of the cup for a moment, because this was really his fucking life, huh? Phil smiled a little, and took his mug from him, then got up to put them both on the bus tray. Jasper trailed along behind.

“When he finishes flight training, Jasper, I want to talk to you about a few projects Fury has me working on. You’ve been in briefing for some of them, a little while back.” And, heaven preserve him from Tampa, Phil actually lifted his eyebrow in apology like he _knew_ how much it had twisted Jasper that he’d been dropped from those. “I can think of several things you and he could help with. We’ll start you off easy to get used to each other; milk runs and such. That ought to give him something new to distract him, and help him feel needed. Move you two up from there-- I need some time to prepare anyway.”

“You think we’re-- he’s-- ready?”

“I think he’s been doing this for nearly four years without us and he’s probably kind of bored at this point, Jasper. What’s your read?” Jasper thought about it, about the optometrist and the podiatrist and the dermatologist and the otolaryngologist. 

“I think he’s bored out of his skull. All right, we’ll do this, sir.”

As he left, Phil told him:

“I have faith that you will, Agent Sitwell. And when you’ve done a few of those runs, I’m putting the request in with Fury to put you on permanent rotation with the team.” and Jasper found himself frozen, unable to do more than blink.  
__

Barton was waiting in Jasper’s office the next day. So was a paper cup that smelled like Actual For Real Coffee, and a cruller. His long fingers were knotted together, just at the tips, and he stood when Jasper came into the office-- though that might have been because there was little room to close the door if one or the other didn’t shift. “Office” might actually have been a bit generous, “converted supply closet” better hit the mark most days.

“Agent Barton,” Jasper greeted him.

“So I really fucked up,” Barton responded.

“You did. You also apologized, and either you’re a much better actor than I thought or the foot in your mouth wasn’t intentional. We need to talk about what you _did_ mean, however.”

“Will you, um, should I expect to be visiting Agent Hill’s division?”

“Yeah, you’re going to have to try much harder to harass me before that’s even an option. Currently, HR is much better at it than you are.”

Barton nearly swooned, right there in the middle of his office. Jasper swallowed his shock, and his coffee, and gestured to him to sit down. He made sure that arranging himself at his own desk took long enough for Barton to get himself under control. Had… had he actually thought he was going to be _fired_? With aim like _that_? Had he _met_ some of the assholes in the agency? People who really _had_ meant shit like that or far worse and gotten away with it, without half his skill?

“I’d just... for the record, I don’t really notice... I mean... “ Barton caught the Look on Jasper’s face, clearly, because he faltered to a stop and then said “I was about to head right back into sneaker sandwich territory, wasn’t I?”

“There’s still no good way that sentence ends, no.”

“Can I try again? And you can slap me down if I get it wrong?” Jasper widened his eyes, and Barton tripped over his words, he was trying to get them out so fast. “Only… I talked to Dr. Hileman about how to say this, and I really kind of need to, okay?”

He’d… talked… to… his… therapist. This, Jasper had to hear. He waved Barton on.

“Okay, this….” Barton sighed. “I assumed that since Agent Hand had asked for you, you must be a good fit for the position. And… yeah, I assumed that was because you were-- and let me say right here that this was stupid-- Latino. But. Also. Because otherwise she wouldn’t have asked for you. Only… only I’m really shit about sticking my foot in my mouth. And? I wish you’d tell me what I got wrong.” He faltered to a stop, looking up at Jasper like if he broke eye contact he was going to bolt for the door.

"Look, Barton,” Jasper found himself saying after a moment’s hesitation, and he leaned forward. “You’ve got no way of knowing this, but I’ve wiped the floor with agents for that before.” More often in fantasy than fact, but still. “And before it was agents, it was kids at school or classmates in college or my platoon mates. That’s what happens when you look like me but you get your Spanish out of Ms. Peterson’s class in 10th grade.” Barton’s face was alternating between _the fuck are you telling me this for_ and what the fuck in general. It felt oddly liberating. 

“You mean you... d’you mind if I ask, sir?”

“Yeah, my Spanish sucks, Barton. I’m adopted. On top of that, I spent most of my childhood with my parents either in consulates in England and Germany or in buildings with doormen in North Chicago, in the Gold Coast, if you know it. Well-- my formal Spanish is just fine, good enough for SHIELD, but no-one would ever believe I was a native speaker. My accent’s stilted and I can’t fucking swear for shit. Makes it kind of hard to fit in with the locals, and there are a lot of agents here who don’t notice that.”

“Seriously? I’m sorry, I’m a fucking jackass. And I always stick my foot in my mouth. But, um, I said that. Although… I’m not sure Agent Hand isn’t also an asshole here?” Jasper was pretty sure on that count, actually, but Barton hadn’t stopped talking. “Um... I spent some time a couple years back in this shitshow op in Nuevo Laredo-- ironically-- and let’s not even talk about Miami. Or Bogota. Let’s _never_ talk about Bogota. Point is, I could help you with that. The swearing thing. Okay, wait, did I just step it in again, sir?” Barton asked, because Jasper was pretty sure whatever he was doing with his face must be confusing as fuck from the outside.

“You know what?” he said, because Barton turned out to have shockingly big and limpid puppy dog eyes, and it was clear he was actually trying-- in a fucked up way-- to do something for Jasper. “We’ve got ops coming up soon; I’m gonna hold you to that when we’re in transit. Just don’t you ever dare tell anyone I learned to swear in my own native tongue from a gringo.”

“No sir. Dying day, sir.”

“One more thing, Agent Barton.”

“Yeah?”

“Fucking do your paperwork correctly, can’t you? I’m not your goddamn secretary.”

“All right,” And Barton fucking _smiled_ at him. “Sure thing. Hand me a pen?” Jasper did, and watched Barton pull a sheaf of paper out of his pocket and fold it over his knee. He chewed on the pen end while he revised.

Jasper felt it was one of the major accomplishments of his life that he didn’t throw anything at his specialist at that point.

_____

That was the third time he’d passed the intersection with the imprint of a doorknob spidered into a wall-- Clint realized he must have been circling HQ for hours now. The adrenaline rush left from the discussion with Sitwell had slowly faded into prickles and a restlessness that had sent him walking with little direction or clear vision. 

Coming out of that conversation not only still a SHIELD agent, but with his original S.O., and a promise of actual ops to come, was not in any of the scenarios he’d played out in his head, or even with Dr. Hileman, once she’d calmed him down somewhat the night before.

That bit of grace couldn’t have come only from her intervention-- and last night, Sitwell had very definitely _not_ been in a mood to explain, or accept apologies, or want to look at Clint’s face again. Clint could accept that his apology might have gone part of the way, and probably he looked too pathetic to kick again. But what he’d told Clint…. Agent Hand was many things, and an asshole among them, but there was no way, if she’d known Sitwell’s background, she’d have offered him that liaison position without more discussion. He wondered if Sitwell’d bothered to tell many people at SHIELD-- probably not. It felt like a gift. 

Clint was damn sure he hadn’t deserved a gift, or that last night Sitwell had felt like giving him one. For the seriously absolutely very first time in his life, Clint felt like maybe someone out there was looking out for him. Like he had a fairy godmother.

(He probably did. It was probably that woman Sitwell was growing his hair back in for, whom he didn’t like to mention existed. And if Clint owed his current good fortune to his S.O. having a particularly good bj or something? He was _not_ one to judge.)

Normally, Clint thought fairy godmothers were problematic at best and creepy at worst-- but he wasn’t gonna complain this one time. He was just gonna be glad he didn’t have to leave all of these beautiful, identical, institutional corridors behind.

“Ow,” said the man who had just attempted to put a hand on his shoulder.

“Esterhazy,” Clint greeted him, gently releasing him from an arm-lock. “Give a guy some warning.”

“Work on your situational awareness,” Esterhazy shot back, straightening his t-shirt and smoothing his dark hair. He flashed Clint a smirk that was either ruined or heightened by the dimple it created-- Clint wasn’t really sure on that point yet.

“Maybe I am. Maybe you’re just a good sneak. What’s up?” Clint asked, as Esterhazy fell into step with him.

“Got a proposition for you, Barton.” Esterhazy said, snaking one arm around Clint’s shoulders. Clint debated with himself for a moment, before deciding he could allow the contact without an elbow to the kidneys. It was a nice dry weight. 

“ _Have_ you now? I’m willing to listen, but keep in mind that I usually save that until at least the second date.” Esterhazy snorted.

“Saying I have to buy you dinner before I can ask you to show me some of your moves with a knife?”

“Hey, those are _advanced_ and highly intimate moves, man.” And Esterhazy could really use some help in that area; he still looked at knives with the distaste of a cat facing a bowl of Whatever Was On Sale at the grocery store. “I tell you what; I’ll give up dinner, and you can give me a tutoring session on ciphers, instead.” He side-eyed Esterhazy and his square shoulders, the way his dark hair curled around his earlobes, and amended “a _private_ session.” Esterhazy nodded, half his mouth quirking into a grin.

“Fair trade. Tomorrow at nine for the sparring session?”

“Naw, man, I’ve got a doctor’s appointment then.”

“Got a lot of those, haven’t you?”

“Hey, it takes work to keep a body as awesome as this.” Esterhazy took the invitation to look very seriously, and Clint laughed and slung an arm around the back of his waist. Esterhazy grinned.

“Been by Agent Wilson’s recently?”

“No one’s asked me; should I have been?” Apparently, whatever came next required whispering, because Esterhazy’s voice was ghosting in his ear.

“He’s been showing Lost weekly-- wanna come?”

“Lost? I think I must have missed the first half of this season.” (And the entirety of the first season, if he was remembering correctly.)

“What were you, under a rock?”

“Sometimes.”

“Okay? Look, no problem, everyone who did see it is confused too. You in, or you got a doctor’s appointment, if that’s not code for sexy times?”

“I’m in,” Clint told him, shrugging off his arm, largely to get him off the subject of doctor’s appointments, because he’d been having a nice time not thinking about that for once. 

“So, why’s watching Lost got to be done in the privacy of Wilson’s not-exactly-spacious quarters?” Clint asked as they wandered along, Esterhazy’s hand brushing his.

“Not to everyone’s taste. It was causing hurt feelings and occasional PTSD flashbacks in the common room-- the polar bear one was memorable. And do not bring it up with Agent Coulson if you want to live. He’s already warned everyone he can get near that it’s all going to go bad after the third season and will last two seasons too long. I think he’s still bitter about Alias. He’s got a disappointed face like my dear mother. _You_ know.”

“Coulson’s disappointed face? I don’t think I’ve ever met the guy, Esterhazy.” Clint let the distance between them increase, as they were now winding their way through the cafeteria. It was late, but not so late that a few agents weren’t about. 

“Oh, you’re funny. Coulson’s personally recruited half the newbies, and everyone knows Agent Sitwell’s one of his favorites.” Esterhazy gestured over to the coffee machine, where an agent in a dark suit and striped tie was methodically wiping out the carafe with a paper towel, preparatory to placing it back on the heating coil. “Come on, don’t tell me you don’t know him. Is his ass as fine close up as everyone seems to think it is?”

“Who, him? I’ve seen him around, I guess,” Clint said, because he had, but never close enough to interact with. “Want me to go ask him if he’s got as cute an ass as everyone says?” And he started forward. 

“You’ll make me jealous, Barton.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll say I’m asking for a friend.” Esterhazy’s laughter cracked and echoed loudly in the cafeteria. 

“I’d pay good money to see that. Maybe you can slap it, too, and see if you can’t get the stick to drop out. C’mon, let’s get going, if you don’t want to miss the start.” His warm hand on the small of Clint’s back guided them out.

Agent Phillip Coulson had turned to watch them at the bark of Esterhazy’s laughter, and his eyes might have lingered a moment on that hand.

___

Phil turned back to the coffee maker, his hands performing the functions necessary to create new caffeinated life while his mind wandered.

He was glad, truly, that Jasper and Barton had worked things out-- although Jasper’s email to him had dwelt long on the topic of HR and their maliciously redundant medical benefits forms. Phil felt a certain small satisfaction that he’d figured out what Barton was doing there when Jasper apparently had yet to do so. It felt like a connection that was his and his alone with Barton-- something other than Miami, and he was going to have to put Miami far behind him, where it belonged.

Barton clearly had. 

Which was for the best. Barton's status at SHIELD was hard-won and Phil would be damned before he did anything to jeopardize it. 

Speaking of which: he was about to put Barton-- and Jasper, and Melinda May, and Bobbi Morse, and any number of other people he’d spent a lot of time cultivating-- into the field under his command. So maybe possibly he should be taking a page from Barton’s book.

Probably time to go back to psych, and make sure his own… issues… were under control. Before he got someone hurt.

Fin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part III (tentatively titled "Phillip") is coming in hopefully less time than Jasper took. It's floods, relationships, memories, and Clint being amazingly slow on the uptake sometimes.
> 
> You can find the full planned arc at the [ series page](http://archiveofourown.org/series/76621), which is also where you can subscribe for the next part! (Convenient, eh?)

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings:  
> Several characters have PTSD, most have some kind of past trauma. The details are left vague, but behaviors and treatment are explored. One character remembers a past suicide. One character uses language another finds racist; the incident is discussed in several scenes, during which both use racial epithets rhetorically.
> 
> Talk to me, please! I love and adore comments and read them over obsessively. Concrit is welcomed, and my tumblr is [here](http://kat-har.tumblr.com/) if you prefer to leave comments via ask. 
> 
> Soundtrack for this story:  
> Chi Ching-- Lady Sovereign  
> The Chemical Brothers-- Galvanize  
> Atmosphere-- Say Hey There  
> Gilmore Girls-- Season 6 Ep 07


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